


Bang!

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Time Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5930338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to 'Far Too Good at Being Bad' and 'Rock and a Hard Place'. Remus POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bang!

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

Every moment your alive you make decisions big and small that change your life forever. Most of the time one is not even the aware and most of the time the fates are kind enough to never let one know what would have happened if one had chosen a different path.

But not always.

Sometimes there's a very definite fork in the road, a clear decision to be made, options to be weighed up, logic to be applied. And you know me. I do this. I make every effort to do the right thing. I used to think logic was my friend. Logic, rationality, it's the thing that raises us up above the beasts. And, I'm sure you can see why that would be rather important to me.

But now I know don't I? Now I know it doesn't damn well work.

Consider it this way: Consider causality.

Imagine an archer shoots an arrow at a balloon and it bursts it.

Bang!

Clearly there is a causal link between the two events. Right? Now imagine two archers both shoot at the balloon and their arrows hit _at the same time_.

Bang!

But which arrow caused the balloon to burst here? Both? Neither? Both implies one alone would not have done the job. Neither? Then why did it burst? Do you see, the more events, the more 'causality' starts to break down.

Are you with me so far? Because this is where it starts to get complicated.

Imagine you are entrusted with keeping that balloon intact. And you knew about archer one and disabled him, but with no knowledge of archer two, despite your best efforts, your logical reasoning the balloon is still as burst as if you hadn't bothered.

So despite your logic:

Bang!

Clearly, logical reasoning is pointless here without a full set of facts. And who has a full set of facts? We are not gods: we are men. (Okay, twenty seven days out of twenty eight for some of us.)

And we are just talking about two possible causes here. In real life, well, its even more complicated.

So no matter how much one might try to do the right thing. Without the full facts one might as well do nothing. So if a person had been captured by Death Eaters and he is given an opportunity to escape and rescue his lover too then all logical reasoning, based on the facts he has, says he should take that opportunity. Right? But logical reasoning is, as we have seen, pointless.

It gets worse.

Without the full information, your actions can have the opposite of their intended effect.

Let's get back to balloons, again you are protecting the balloon and again you only know about one of the archers threatening it. So again you disable one of the archers but the balloon is still burst by the second. But what if, if you had allowed both archers to fire, their arrows would have collided in mid air _and neither one would have hit the balloon_

So **because** of your logic:

Bang!

Lucius was going to kill him. When I walked in. He was on top of him. Inside him. And the blood from where he'd flayed Sirius' back was everywhere, all over the bed, all over them both. And gods, the smell of it.

The smell of the blood.

And he had a stiletto in his hand. He was going to kill him. That knife was going right into the back of Sirius' neck the minute Malfoy came. I knew that. Dammit part of me **understood** that. (To be precise exactly 1/28 of me understood that).

So, it's right there. I used logic. I saved his life.

It seemed like the right thing to do, but I didn't have all the facts.

I didn't know that if I had let Malfoy kill him he would never have become a traitor. He would never have killed all our friends and countless muggles. He'd be dead. Not in Azkaban. But most of all, he wouldn't be a traitor. He'd be dead, but he would have died a hero.

And I would never have known how much logic can let you down.

Because of **my** logic:

Bang!

How can one ever make rational decisions, when one doesn't have all the facts? And one never has all the facts. Even now I'm probably missing something vital.

\--

There's a party going on the street outside. I can hear music and laughing. I've even seen streamers floating past the window and, yes, balloons No one's knocked on the door. I guess they're not that crass - to ask me to celebrate the biggest mistake of my life. Then again it could be that they just don't know I'm here. I haven't lit the candles yet, even though it got dark hours ago.

So I'll just stay here, that's what I'll do. I've weighed up all the options and I've made a sensible logical decision one last time: I decided to go out of my fucking mind.

\--

BANG


End file.
